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Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction and Uncanny Magazine Year Four!

Uncanny!

Over the last three years, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas ran Kickstarters for the Hugo Award-winningUncanny MagazineYears One, Two, and Three. We promised to bring you stunning cover art, passionate science fiction and fantasy fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, and provocative nonfiction by writers from every conceivable background. Not to mention a fantastic podcast featuring exclusive content. Through the hard work of our exceptional staff and contributors, Uncanny Magazine delivered on that promise. All that fantastic Uncanny Magazine content is freely available over the web and available as eBooks, thanks to your support. The Space Unicorn Ranger Corps, the Uncanny Magazine community, made it possible for our remarkable staff and contributors to create this wonderful art for all of our readers. THANK YOU, SPACE UNICORNS.

If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to join or re-up with the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps, now’s your chance!

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction is a continuation of the Destroy series in which we, disabled members of the science fiction community, will put ourselves where we belong: at the center of the story. Often, disabled people are an afterthought, a punchline, or simply forgotten in the face of new horizons, scientific discovery, or magical invention. We intend to destroy ableism and bring forth voices, narratives, and truths most important to disabled writers, editors, and creators with this special issue.

The Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Contributors and Editors So Far!

Disabled People Destroy will feature solicited work from the following authors and artist:

There will also be more slots for unsolicited submissions. We reopen to regular submissions once we reach our first funding milestone. The specific call for submissions for Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction will come in early 2018.

As always, we're deeply committed to finding and showcasing new voices in our genre from around the world.

How We’ll Use the Funding:

Our current funding goal ($22,000) is for the current version of Uncanny, with a theme issue for Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.

This goal pays for all six issues of Uncanny Year Four, including (at minimum) per issue:

25,000 words of new fiction (5-6 stories, depending on length)

A reprint story

Reprint cover art

4 new poems

4 new nonfiction essays

2 new interviews

This is the size the magazine has grown to thanks to ongoing community support. Our Year Four budget for this Kickstarter reflects our current content levels. We pay our writers $.08 per word for original fiction, our poets $30 per poem, our essayists $50 per essay, and our artists $100 per reprinted artwork.

Our Years One, Two, and Three backers were so generous we reached all our stretch goals, which added additional stories and essays to each issue. Our awesome backers also sponsored several pieces of original cover art.

$30,000 Exclusive access to a key that unlocks Cassandra Khaw’s "Auntie Jaeger" Game for all backers! The game: Two sisters –a truck driver and a housewife– fend off a Kaiju apocalypse in the Great Smoky Mountains with their mech Mama Possum. A story of family, grief, and survival, it forms a part of what is currently nicknamed the '"Jaeger Aunties" universe, which is essentially Pacific Rim with more horror, more diversity, and more middle-aged people being totally bad-ass as a squad.- UNLOCKED!

$33,000 Original cover art from TRAN NGUYEN!- UNLOCKED!

$36,000 Two stories added to the Special Shared-Universe Dinosaur Issue through open submissions!- UNLOCKED!

$45,000 PRINTED PHYSICAL COPIES of the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction special issue for backers at $50 and above! If we reach this goal, you will be able to change your pledge to receive a copy of the book. We promise.- UNLOCKED!

As a token of our gratitude, we have TWO add-ons now available to you!

Every backer at the $50 Destroyer and Sustainer and above levels will automatically receive a coveted Space Unicorn Patch AND the Space Unicorn Temporary Tattoo (created by Galen Dara, as seen on her Chesley Award-winning Uncanny #10 cover) as part of their backer reward!

Backers below that level who add $10 on to their pledges can select a patch as their add-on and also receive one!

OR backers below that level who add $10 on to their pledges can select the temporary tattoo add-on (which will come with an Issue 10 cover art postcard)!

OR backers can receive BOTH the patch AND the temporary tattoo by adding $15 to their pledge!

Space Unicorn Patch

Galen Dara's Temporary Tattoo!

UPDATE 8/14! Nicola Griffith will be writing a piece for Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction!

That's right, Space Unicorns! Nicola Griffith will be writing something for the special issue! WE ARE SO EXCITED!

Nicola Griffith: English novelist (now dual UK/US citizen) living in Seattle. Author of six novels (Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, Stay, Always, Hild). So Lucky, out in late spring 2018, is her first book from a disability perspective. Founder and co-host of #CripLit, a regular Twitter chat for disabled writers. Winner of the Washington State Book Award for Fiction, Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy, and 6 Lambda Literary Awards. Holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin. Married to writer Kelley Eskridge. Currently lost in the 7th century (working on the second novel about Hild of Whitby). Emerges to drink just the right amount of beer and take enormous delight in everything.

Nicola Griffith

UPDATE 8/21! Naomi Novik and Mallory Yu will be writing pieces for Uncanny Magazine Year 4!

We are so pleased to announce two new contributors to Uncanny Magazine's regular Year Four!
We've got a brand new short story coming during regular Year Four from Naomi Novik!

Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is a first-generation American raised in New York on a mix of Tolkien and Polish fairy tales, stories of the woods and Baba Yaga. She went on to study English at Brown and Computer Science at Columbia, with enthusiastically pursued minors in fanfic and gaming. She is the author of the Hugo-nominated Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons (dragons make everything better) and the Nebula-winning novel Uprooted, a fantasy influenced by the Polish fairy tales of her childhood. In 2009, she co-founded the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works to support the work of fan creators and fair use rights, and was one of the primary developers of the open-source Archive of Our Own. Her website is at naominovik.com and my twitter handle is @naominovik.

AND, We've got a brand new essay coming during regular Year Four from Mallory Yu!

Mallory Yu

Mallory Yu is a radio producer and editor for NPR’s All Things Considered. In addition to working on daily news stories, she's doing her best to bring her love of nerdy pop culture and science fiction/fantasy to the show. As a queer Chinese-American, she's especially interested in exploring the intersection of identity, race, and pop culture and can often be found ranting about the lack of nuanced diverse representation in media. In her spare time, she's reading comics, figuring out her next cosplay, or planning her next scuba trip.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 16: cover art by Galen Dara

About Uncanny:

Uncanny Magazine is published as an eBook (MOBI, PDF, EPUB) bimonthly (the every-other-month kind) on the first Tuesday of that month through all of the major online eBook stores. Each Uncanny Magazine issue contains 5-6 new short stories, 1 reprinted story, 4 poems, 4 nonfiction essays, and 2 interviews. Our monthly podcast includes a story, a poem, and an exclusive interview in each episode.
Kickstarter Backers at the Subscriber level or higher get each issue in its entirety up front, no waiting. Those reading online for free will be able to read the first half of the issue online when the eBook is released, but will have to wait a month for the second half to appear on the first Tuesday of the next month at uncannymagazine.com.

We at Uncanny think we’re doing important work, and we’d like to continue. Please consider supporting Uncanny Magazine Year Four and Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.

Uncanny Magazine Staff:

Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas guide the magazine as Publishers and Editors-in-Chief. Four-time Hugo Award winner Lynne is the former Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013) which was a finalist for three Hugo Awards during her tenure. She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords with Tara O’Shea, as well as Whedonistas with Deborah Stanish, and the Hugo Award finalist Chicks Dig Comics with Sigrid Ellis. She co-moderated the two-time Hugo Award-winning SF Squeecast and contributes to the Hugo Award finalist Doctor Who: Verity! podcast. She is currently a finalist for two Hugo Awards and was a 2017 finalist for two Locus Awards for her work on Uncanny Magazine.

Hugo Award-winner Michael was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013). He also co-edited the Hugo Award finalist Queers Dig Time Lords with Sigrid Ellis and Glitter & Mayhem with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas. He is the moderator for Down & Safe: A Blake’s 7 Podcast. He is currently a finalist for two Hugo Awards and was a 2017 finalist for two Locus Awards for his work on Uncanny Magazine.

Michi Trota

Michi Trota is Uncanny’s Managing Editor. She is a writer, editor, speaker, communications manager, and community organizer in Chicago, IL, and the first Filipina Hugo Award winner. Michi writes about geek culture, representation, and occasionally food on her blog Geek Melange. Her first comic appears in the upcoming anthology New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei, and she is a professional editor with over fifteen years of experience in publishing and communications.

Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky

Uncanny’s Parsec Award-winning podcast is edited and produced by Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky. Erika, who also reads for the podcast, is a government writer by day and by night is co-host and producer of the popular Doctor Who podcast Verity! She also co-hosts The Audio Guide to Babylon 5. Steven is one of the three hosts of the world-renowned Doctor Who podcast Radio Free Skaro. Erika and Steven each co-host hockey podcasts (Beginner's Puck and Hockey Feels, respectively) and are frequent panelists on, and editors for, several podcasts on The Incomparable Podcast Network. From their couch, they co-host the Lazy Doctor Who podcast and produce a multitude of podcasts for others as the two halves of Castria.

Mimi Mondal

Uncanny Magazine’s Reprint/Poetry Editor, Mimi Mondal, was born and raised in Calcutta, India. In various incarnations, she has been an editor with Penguin India, a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and an Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholar at the Clarion West Writing Workshop 2015. Her stories, poetry, and social commentary have appeared in The Book Smugglers, Daily Science Fiction, Podcastle, Scroll.in, Muse India, Kindle Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (2017) from Twelfth Planet Press. Her first collection of stories is also forthcoming in India from Juggernaut Books. Mimi almost always enjoys the company of monsters.

Shana DuBois

Uncanny Magazine’s Interviewer Shana DuBois is an extreme bibliophile. Her bookish musings can be found over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-fi and Fantasy Blog, the Nerds of a Feather blog, and the SF Signal archives. She enjoys talking to anyone that'll stand still long enough about all things book related and will apply that passion for the written word to her new role as the Uncanny Magazine Interviewer. When not spending time with books, she tends to her farm's menagerie.

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Guest Editors:

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry is a partially deafblind speculative fiction writer and disability activist. Her short fiction is included in Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, Fireside Magazine, and Ghost in the Cogs. She also writes for tabletop roleplaying games and was part of the ENNIe award-winning staff for Dracula Dossier. Her nonfiction has been included in The Boston Globe, Uncanny Magazine, Terrible Minds, and many other venues. She teaches disability representation at Writing the Other, and recently spoke at the New York Public Library on this topic. She is the Managing Editor at Fireside Magazine. She has a Masters in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College, and uses it to critique media representation of disability from all mediums.

Dominik Parisien

Dominik Parisien is the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of the forthcoming Robots vs Fairies, and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the Locus and British Fantasy Awards. He also edited the Aurora Award-nominated Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly, Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories, as well as other magazines and anthologies. His fiction has twice been nominated for the Sunburst Award. He is a disabled, French Canadian living in Toronto.

Judith Tarr

Judith Tarr… hates writing bios of herself. She would rather write historical fantasy or historical novels or epic fantasy or the (rather) odd alternate history, or short stories on just about any subject that catches her fancy. She has been a World Fantasy Award nominee for her Alexander the Great novel, Lord of the Two Lands, and won the Crawford Award for her Hound and the Falcon trilogy. She also writes as Caitlin Brennan (The Mountain’s Call and sequels) and Kathleen Bryan (The Serpent and the Rose and sequels). Caitlin published House of the Star, a magical-horse novel from Tor, in Fall 2010. The paperback appeared in November of 2011. She is dancinghorse on LiveJournal, Facebook, and Twitter.

Nicolette Barischoff

Nicolette Barischoff was born with spastic cerebral palsy, which has only made her more awesome. Her fiction has appeared in Long Hidden, Accessing the Future, The Journal of Unlikely Academia, Podcastle, and Angels of the Meanwhile. She regularly writes about disability, feminism, sex- and body-positivity, and how all these fit together. Her personal essays on these topics get read way more than her fiction does, which is only a little annoying. She regularly collaborates with visual and performance artists to promote normalization of visibly disabled bodies. She’s been on the front page of CBS New York, where they called her activism public pornography and suggested her face was a Public Order Crime.

S. Qiouyi Lu

S. Qiouyi Lu is a writer, editor, narrator, and translator; their fiction and poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons and Uncanny, among other venues, and they currently edit the quarterly speculative flash fiction/poetry magazine Arsenika. They are a dread member of the Queer Asian SFFH Illuminati and enjoy destroying speculative fiction in their spare time. They live in Los Angeles, California with a tiny black cat named Thin Mint. Find out more at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter at @sqiouyilu.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 13: Cover art by Julie Dillon

Risks and challenges

The risk for any magazine is that it won't meet its promised deadlines. Uncanny Magazine Years One through Three came out on time every issue, and all of the contributors were paid on acceptance. We fulfilled all our Year One and Two backer rewards and the vast majority of Year Three rewards (with a handful still being arranged, and issue 18 scheduled to come out on time).

All the contributors listed have agreed to submit work to Year Four of Uncanny Magazine, but we cannot guarantee publication of any particular writer or artist. Many things can happen during the creation process, which could prevent creators completing works. That said, we feel strongly that this group of writers and artists will come through and create excellent stories, poetry, art, and essays for Year Four of Uncanny Magazine.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $50 or more
About $50

DESTROYER AND SUSTAINER

DESTROYER AND SUSTAINER. Exclusive access to A Very Special Uncanny Multifandom Podcast Mashup episode recorded just for our backers featuring members of the Verity!, Radio Free Skaro, and Down & Safe podcasts! Plus a postcard of Year Four cover art (you'll get to select one of three artists on the survey); Electronic subscription to Uncanny Year Four in the format of your choice (MOBI, PDF, EPUB); your name listed in issue 19, and our deep thanks. If we reach the requisite goal ($45,000), you will receive a print copy of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

PICK-A-BRAIN LIVE

Live Q&A on Skype or Google Hangout scheduled with one or both of the Thomases AND one of the following, first come, first serve: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Eisner-winner Caitlin Rosberg (comics portfolio review),
Michi Trota, Steven Schapansky & Erika Ensign (Podcasting!)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

Dinner with a creator

Dinner with a creator of your choice, likely at a convention. First come, first choice. You must get to the convention, but we will buy you dinner. Naomi Novik (New York Comic Con only); Mimi Mondal ; Michi Trota; Lynne M. Thomas ; Michael Damian Thomas
Also includes everything from the $50 level.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $300 or more
About $300

YOU ARE IN THE STORY

An Uncanny author will tuckerize you, adding the name of your choice to one of their stories. Hiromi Goto (warning: characters may not be NICE) and William Alexander (in his Destroy story!) are ready to put you in their stories!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $10,000
About $10,000

UNCANNYCON!

The backer at this level will be one of the Guests of Honor (with other science fiction & fantasy professionals to be determined) at the inaugural UNCANNYCON, a single-day convention event to be held in Champaign-Urbana, IL at a date to be determined (assuming somebody backs at this level). Accommodations provided.

Also includes everything at the $50 level AND a bespoke short story from John Wiswell where the backer selects the prompt!